Lunchroulette

A few weeks ago I decided to try somewhere different for lunch. I found a website called wheeldecide.com which can randomly choose from nearby restaurants or take-aways. I decided to use it to choose where to go for lunch.

Week 1: Full Stop Sandwich

This place was a bit of a walk. I didn't know where 'New Town Row' was and had to look it up on a map. When I got there it was almost empty but while I was paying for my sandwich it started to fill up. I chose their 'sandwich of the day' which was pork and stuffing. It came with a very thick gravy and a few pieces of crackling.

Week 2: Tuckers

I walk past this place, in the Minories, fairly regularly. It does sandwiches and hot food. I decided to try the all day breakfast for £5 which had bacon, egg, sausage, black pudding, beans, toast, hash brown and tomatoes. It also came with a cup of tea. It was good value and very filling.

Week 3: Wasabi

I needed to walk to the shops to pick up something I had ordered from PC World so I put the postcode for the High Street into Wheeldecide. It kept coming up with places in the Palisades, which is closed for refurbishment, so I decided to go to Wasabi, in New Street Station, instead.

I had been wanting to go there since it opened. I chose one of their salmon sushi boxes, which came with a couple of spicy chicken skewers.

They have a wide range of sushi and bento boxes, with rice and noodles. I'll have to revisit to try something else.

Deep Fried Sushi

We were back in Birmingham today so we paid a visit to Woktastic, which we go to occasionally when we're in the city centre. We always have the all you can eat sushi and every now and then they introduce different types of sushi.

The change this time was the introduction of deep fried sushi. I don't know how long they have been serving this since it's been a while since we were last there. Part of me thinks that deep fried sushi is such a bad idea and goes against the simple and healthy image of sushi. Another part of me thinks that if a food is worth eating, it is worth deep frying.

Yo Sushi take-away

Emma texted me to say she had bought something special for our tea but I wasn't expecting take away sushi. We shared 3 take-away boxes. It was a very nice surprise and the first time I'd had actual slices of sashimi, instead of having small amounts rolled up in sushi.

Week 46: Sushi

We like sushi but had never made it ourselves until now. The strips of seaweed came from Japan but all the other ingredients were bought from a local supermarket.

To make sushi for 2, boil 150g of sushi rice until it becomes soft, then strain and rinse with cold water. When the rice has cooled, dissolve some sugar and a little salt in rice vinegar and mix into the rice. For the rolls we put a sheet of seaweed on some foil, put a thin layer of rice on the seaweed followed by a few strips of tuna, chicken, omelette or vegetable. We used the foil to help roll the seaweed.

Serve with soy sauce, wasabi or picked ginger.

We don't have access to guaranteed fresh tuna to make sashimi-style sushi so we sliced and fried it first. Obviously the chicken was also cooked too. Different rolls had various combinations of vegetables, which included cucumber, yellow pepper and pickled chilli.

Woktastic Birmingham

The 'Woktastic Noodle and Sushi Bar' in Birmingham does an all you can eat sushi bar at certain times of the day, including all day at weekends. We've had sushi a few times before but I'd never been to a place where you pick it from the conveyor belt before. It was also the first time I had eaten so much raw fish.

(To build up an appetite first we went round the Sea Life centre to look at the fish. There was also a 3D 'Spongebob' film being shown, which was a bit of fun.)

The range of sushi is impressive - a wide variety of the different rolls and nigri. Noodles and vegetables were also available. The spices soy beans were very soft and tender. The pods were a bit tough but I soon realised you weren't supposed to eat them.

For £12.99 it is definitely good value. Since most of the bowls contain 2 of each type of sushi, we usually shared so that we could try a bit of everything. We managed to try most types before we got to full and had to stop. Next time we're in Birmingham we might return and see if we can try what we missed this time around.